Initiators are generally in the form of a sealed container for containing a pyrotechnical material. For electrical firing the container has lead wires extending from the initiator to an electrical power source. The internal design can include an exploding bridge wire (EBW) or other well established combinations for achieving ignition of a pyrotechnic material which serves as an initiator for a larger quantity of propellent or explosives. Various modifications to the squib have included safety measures to prevent premature firing, delay techniques including devices to control the precise time to initiate the firing, and specific design required for the environment of use including the size, location, and means for mounting the initiator or squib for igniting a rocket motor or similar combination to provide propulsion energy or hot gas supply for multi-purposes or uses.
Other techniques for achieving rapid ignition or detonation have included the use of fuses that transforms mechanical vibrations into electrical energy. Such fuses contain barium titanate as a piezoelectric material.
Propulsion engineers have faced other design problems which have necessitated the prevention of propellant grain damage as a result of fragmentation of the initiator case or hardware components. Also, in shoulder fired rocket motors it is essential that no debris from the igniter case of the initiator damages the grain or plugs the nozzle. U.S. Pat. No. 4,576,094 issued on Mar. 18, 1986 to Jacqueline C. Meador and assigned to The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army, Washington, D.C. discloses expandable polystyrene plastic ignition containers which solve the problem of nozzle plugging and propellant grain damage. The yield of light weight particles from the disintegrated cases are discharged out of a shoulder fired rocket motor without inflicting damage to the propellant grain or causing plugging of the nozzle during operation.
An additional improvement to initiators would be an initiator that doesn't require a containment case, but which relates to a technique wherein the initiator is self consumable after being ignited.
Therefore, an object of this invention is to provide a self consumable initiator system which employs laser energy directed through a fiber optic material to ignite a propellant grain or explosive material.